


The Long Shot

by prieta



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Beverly is a better therapist than Hannibal, F/M, It's not that nice, Maybe ripped off of a CSI episode, Murder Vacation, There is clam chowder, They're by the ocean, Will has his version of a nice day, crazy douchebag pyschiatrist? what crazy douchebag psychiatrist?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 19:30:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prieta/pseuds/prieta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will is drowning at sea and Beverly doesn't know what to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Shot

**Author's Note:**

> Hannibal is not in this fic. There will be no Hannibal here. Think of it as a Hannibal-less slightly-less-sweaty-Will utopian AU, or maybe a prequel.

 

 

 

. .. o.O.o .. .

 

“You know, I can feed myself just fine.”

 “Sure,” Beverly laughs, “like you ate anything else today.”

 He smiles, wry, a little quiet grimace but it’s better than he looked five minutes ago. “And besides,” she adds. “No one can resist JJ’s pancakes.”

 “No one,” he agrees. When he leans in to grab a fork, their wrists brush. There’s a smudge of powdered sugar on the corner of his shirt sleeve, but he doesn’t notice. His shirt is rumpled at the collar. He's not wearing glasses. Outside, there's the dry scratching sound of his dogs scrabbling on the hardwood porch. 

Maybe she stays for longer than necessary, maybe she smiles and settles her chair a little closer as the sun slips through the windows. Will doesn't mind, hand slipping under his table to offer little bits of pancake to the dog sprawled out under their seat. His breath curls warm on her hands when she reaches for the syrup and it’s enough. To sit here, sharing a plate of pancakes, hear him tapping his fork mindlessly on the counter. 

Later, there will be bodies, stacked up on their metal chaises like offerings, sickness written in every knife-line. Later, she will have to watch Will's eyes go pale and bleak as they do when he is grieving

But for now, it's enough.

-

That night, she is awakened at an ungodly hour by the sound of her cell phone ringing-  _Jaws,_ which can only mean one man.

"We have a case," Jack's voice commands, his voice tinny but somehow still managing to convey the size of it, the bredth of him, through her crappy speakers. "It's in Boston. First flight out in the morning."

She's already fumbling for her shoes on the ground, "sure, yeah, boss."

"You'll meet the rest of the team there."

"And Will?" There's a moment of silence, an ugly thing. Static hisses in her ears, like he's breathing right in the phone. Which, knowing Jack, he most likely could be.

"Graham will be flying out with us. Agent Katz." And she can recognize a warning when she hears one.

"Yeah, sure. Will, too. Got it. Boss."

He hangs up. 

-

Just because she doesn't want Will anywhere near the FBI doesn't mean she hates her job; in fact has always loved it. She appreciates it as few other people can: the slick lines of scalpels and needles, the hum of fluorescent lights, a gleaming clean quality to it. The body as a work of art, every messy vein and slick organ a quantity, a measurable thing. They line her table, still human but only on a very cerebral level, nothing but puzzles to break down and reassemble.

 But Will can’t think like that- it’s his curse. They call him an impersonal man but he’s nothing but personal. His eyes trace bruises and broken bone and his hands tremor in sympathy like he feels every blow as his own.  So when he walks into the slowly filling morgue, still stumbling from the car ride out, and glimpses the tray of eyes on the table, unblinking, glittering like diamonds, he stops short at the doorstep, has to close his eyes and turn his head, his sternum shaking with the force of his deep, pained breath.

 Jack’s form brackets the doorway, looming behind Will, with one hand bullies Will into the room. He stumbles like a drunken man.

 “Eyes,” she says. “About 16 of them. Perfectly preserved. Not a scratch on them.”

 “Match them?”

 “Crime Scene is going to sweep the room later- but they preserved it, for-”

 Jack turns, expectant. Will shakes his head like a dog shaking fleas, but he opens his eyes anyway, they lock onto the tray. “I know,” he agrees. “I’m coming.”

-

The basement is well lit and well taken care of. Emptied jars line the shelves, replaced after their contents were taken out. Direct orders to Crime Scene- on Jack Crawford’s behest. Will situates himself within the room, ghosting his fingers over the jars and neatly lined folders, like an old lover reacquainting himself with a familiar body. His eyes don’t focus properly, they lag milliseconds behind the turn of his head.

 “Eyes are clean,” he says, “bodies aren’t.”

 Tucked behind another pile of papers, Beverly uncovers a phonograph, the old-fashioned kind, with a trumpet that curls delicately like the petals on a flower. The record still tucked under the needle has words penned in a looping font on the side; _Anna, 1998, Tchaikovsky_.

“They curdle, spoil, putrify. They become- ugly.” He stops at the line of jars again, labeled with the same curling script as the records, his fingers curl reverentially around the glass. Tips them to the light, they gleam dully as he turns them in his palms.

 “But not eyes. They remain, if you do it right. Still beautiful.”

 “Mementos, then,” Jack says, sweeps his hands as if regathering the reins of the room. “We’ll look for any useable material-”

 “You won’t. Find any.” Will cuts in, his voice almost dreamy. Wavering, swaying. “His work is flawless. He made sure of it.”

 Jack’s voice tightens, irritation, “well then, you’ll have to find it for us, won’t you.”

 Zeller stumbles over something, the hollow ringing note it makes- copper, brass maybe, reverberates through the syrupy air. The tension lingers, though.  “Won’t you,” Will echoes, still oblivious, his gaze slanted and distant. Beverly folds the record into an evidence folder, tucks it under her arm.

-

The records are filled with screams; terrified, female screams they sustain for the first few hours but inevitably, relentlessly, peter out, smothered like a weak flame under a blanket, violins soaring over her final choking breaths a high, sweet counterpoint to the low humming of drums.

 She brings him coffee, because she knows he needs something to swallow his pills with. Two hours in, he’s surfaced sweating like a man drowning. Their shoulders brush against each other as she kneels beside him on the curb but there is no comfort. The little dab of powdered sugar still sits on his sleeve, smudged now. He throws his head back, pills and half the cup in one motion, how another man would throw back a shot.

 “Hey,” she asks. “You come back okay?”

 “They,” he mutters, hunches in a little tighter. His hair is damp and curled in little hooks, she can barely hear his voice over the low roar of people, “they were beautiful, but vile. What he felt inside himself was- base. Ugly. So he.”

 “Hey,” she repeats, their elbows bumping. “Will. Come back.” It’s when she has her fingers curled around the back of his neck that she can feel the tremors that course through his body. Behind them, Price is replaying the tapes, and the low hum of drums rolls through the crowds and out onto the curb, breaking against their back.

 Will turns his head like a man moving underwater. His pupils focus sluggishly, his irises pale and red-rimmed like sea glass.

 “I’m back,” he says. His forehead is sweaty but she closes her eyes anyway, lets him lean in.

-

16 eyes. Eight pairs of them. Two are dark brown, one is amber, the other five are a pale, translucent blue. Clear as crystal.

 Eight face stare at her, pinned to the murder board like butterflies to a cork, tied together with bright string. Red for social connection, blue for spacial coincidence, green for their daily routes. She had to cut apart the eyes to get any DNA- as Will said; his work was flawless. She wonders if someone ought to bury them.

 Eight faces; all young, all pretty. Svelte, sloe-haired things with bright eyes and fine features. They smile at her from behind their cage of thread, little birds trapped in the moment of flight. She thinks: of red string woven through her grandmother’s hands. Right after Beverly'd started living with her, when she was still crying and moping around, her grandmother would whip off her necklace and string it around her hands, smile slyly, waggling her hands to attract attention.  _Kang Sok._ Her fingers wove and unwove, tucked and untucked, rheumatic but still quick. The pale, lined expanse of her bony wrists a tender kind of beauty. Beverly practiced until her fingers were raw and chafed but it still wasn’t quite the same. _The red thread of fate_ , her grandmother had whispered, winking conspiratorially. _Who will you catch?_

 There are coffee cups lining the tables, documents scattered every which way, Jack’s voice vibrates through the walls. Loud, sharp, commanding as it is wont. The newest documents pinned to the board are scrawled in blue ink, uneven letters as if the hand that had written them shook. _Who indeed_ , she thinks.

-

“There’s got to be _some_ remnants. _Somewhere._ ” Jack prowls the room, a dangerous animal. Claws for balled up hands. The other people, the police, Price and Zeller, are crowded against the doorways and the sides of the room. Watching the spectacle unfold with wide eyes. Only Will, collapsed against the wall, remains, propped up, his head lolling.

 “Not necessarily,” Will croaks, “not necessarily. You know that.”

 “Well, is _he_ eating them, too?”

 "No,” his lips curl, pained. “It’s not like that- not with them. He-”

 “Then where _are they_?”

 “I don’t- I don’t know. He- hates them. Afterwards. They disgust him- he only wants them-gone.” His hands fumble in his jacket, for pills, probably, but he only holds them in his hand. He looks like a dying man, pale as a ghost, maybe one of the wraiths who’ve dug their fingers into his head. One of the men- a police officer, probably, raises a hand, opens his mouth as if to protest, but Jack whirls on him, snarling, and he hastily backs off, hands raised.

 “Come on,” Beverly elbows his way through. “Jack.”

 “Don’t start,” he jabs his fingers at her.

 Will's brow is beaded with sweat. His throat bobs with each convulsive swallow, he only stammers this much when he's past his 6th cup of coffee. “He only wants them to disappear. No burial. Just let them- evaporate.”

 And suddenly, she sees; the green smudges on the corners of his wallpaper. Scraped against one of the jars. He’s neat- too neat for mold. A mouldering, fertile green. A green she knows, lining the edges of wooden platforms, blooming on the underside of planks. Tangling together, live and growing. The smell of it, low and dark.

 “Algea,” she says. “He’s dumping them into the harbour.”

-

She can feel him slipping like water, running through the sieve of her fingers and out onto the hot sand. No matter how fast she scoops or how tightly she weaves her fingers together he slips out from between them and slides away again. Like chasing the shoreline, beholden only to the cold moon.

 “Boat house makes sense.” Zeller plods alongside her and Price. Will paces ahead of them. “It’s private, quiet, and provides him with an easy way to dump the bodies. The ocean- nature’s great recycler.”

 “Eco-friendly mass murdering,” Price snorts. “I hope it doesn’t catch on.”

 “How long do you think it’ll take to- Jesus Christ!” Price and Zeller jump, but she’s already running, stumbling over the waterlogged benches.

 When she reaches him, he’s flat on his back, staring up in bewilderment at her. His hands stretch out as if reaching, grasping before his gaze collapses and he folds in on himself, pupils rolled up to show milky, broken veins.

 “Bite on this,” she hurries to shove her jacket between his teeth. His fingers, an animal’s jaw, sink into her bare arms, and he shakes, shakes, shakes.

-

“He’s overdone it again. And you know it. Jack.” Her fingers tighten on the chairtop. She stares back, doesn't let herself flinch.

 “Don’t tell me what to do, Katz,” he snaps. The corners of his eyes are yellow, little triangles of color in his dark face, twisted in frustration. Lined and weary. No different from his mourning face, after all.

 Jack slams the door on his way out. It shuts with a bang, like the sound of a collision, or a wall crumbling apart.

-

She brings him clam chowder.

 His gown is papery and thin, balloons out over his ribs and stomach. There are flowers on his nightstand, paper plates full of some nondescript lump. Untouched.

 “Jack’s out,” he says.

 “Chowder.” She raises the bag. “Figure you’d need a break from all that awful crap hospitals dare call food.”

 He smiles, still not looking at her, “maybe I did.”

 She perches herself, awkwardly by his right side. Her knees just brush the bleached sheets of his bedside. The plastic crinkles crisply as he unties the top of the bag. The windows are open, letting the salty breeze roll in. Outside she can hear gulls, their voices distant but shrill, and the moan of cars on the streets. People on the boardwalk, chattering and strolling.

 “I missed it,” he says, suddenly, addressing the window. “I almost forgot, but I remember. I’ve missed it. The sea.”

 Someone had shaved him, without the coat of stubble his jaw looks vulnerable. He looks paler, watered down and bleached out, white on white against the sterile hospital walls. His shoulders shift his gown and it rustles dryly. He hasn’t met her eye, mind soaring somewhere leagues out over the Atlantic, where she can't follow. He continues, “You think you forget, but you can’t. Not a thing like that.”

 “And somewhere sailing on those waters- a mass murderer. With a boat full of eyeballs.” His eyes flick to her shoulder. He chuckles, suddenly, the noise surprised out of him. Hoarse, and dry, a throaty sound, she smiles back, relieved. His teeth are white. With his uncluttered eyes and clean jaw, she feels like she's gotten a glimpse of the man he would have been like. His fingers resettle, close to her knee. Close enough if she leaned over he’d bump her leg. She imagines they would be warm.

 “Jack’s got all personnel on boat searches. What’re you doing here?”

She thinks, of the aquarium by their house her grandmother took her to. She loved it, would press her face against the cold glass until her nose ached. Her favorite place was the kelp gardens. She remembers- translucent fingers tangled together, interlocked, tall limbs swaying with the underwater breeze. The soft silver underbellies of surfperch and barracuda as they flit between the branches. Breathing, alive, limned in a watery halo. Buoyed upwards towards the light. “I’m here,” she says, feeling reckless. “To break you out.”

-

She takes him to the marina. His glasses are slightly askew, the shirt she snuck him is frayed and a size too big, but he walks confidently amongst the ropes and tills like he had never left.

 She’s rolling up her sleeves- stupid, stupid- when she glances up. His fingers close around her wrist. They’re dry, gentle.

 “Did,” he licks his lips, “I do that?” He shifts his hand; they fit snugly against the dark prints on her arm. Like a Roscharch ink.

 “Takes more than that to hurt me.” But he’s turning away, eyes downcast. The water laps at their legs, a few feet down. There are buoys, three of them, bright underbellies bobbing in the dark water. She can feel the threads of conversation falling apart in her hands, sliding maddingly through her clenched fingers. She blurts, “my father. Used to own a boat, too. A sailing boat.”

 Another ship undocks and unfurls its sails, curling open like the gray edges of gull’s wings, its moorings unlocked with a clang. “I loved that boat. Spent more time sleeping there than on land. But, when he died- my grandmother didn’t know what to do with it. Took up too much space, too much money to keep it docked. So she sold it.”

Standing on a dock is like walking on a tightrope; how to stay still while the world rocks around you. “I’m sorry,” he tells her.

“Don’t be. Frankly, he was a bit of a dick.” It startles another laugh out of him, she moves her arm so it’s lined up with his again. As she thought: he’s warm. “The kind of guy who’d stick nails in meat for the dogs that wandered into our yard. I missed the boat more than him.”

 His hair curls in the damp breeze, fragile little ringlets that brush against his brow when the wind picks up. She wants to run her fingers in them. “My first boyfriend. Also a major asshole. I only dated him because of his boats. His parents had, like, a private dock. Big family tradition; racing yachts. Can you imagine?”

 “Seems like you've had bad luck with the men in your life.” He still won’t look at her.

 “Naw,” she replies. “Not anymore.”

 There are smudges, fingerprint dust lining the hollow of his eye sockets. They’d be a matched pair, she thinks. She says: “Will.” He tilts his head in answer, and she leans in before she can stop herself, presses her lips to the frown on the his mouth. His lips are chapped, soft with surprise. They taste like stale coffee and cheap mint toothpaste, something salty and sharp in the corners. She pulls away just as she feels him tense.

 “Beverly-”

 One hand rises to his mouth, they don't wipe, just press. He's looking at her. Really looking this time, and he avoids eye contact so frequently she forgets- how blue his eyes are.

 “But the smell,” she tells him. “I could never quite get over it.”

Will smiles. “Yeah.” He turns away, again, shifts his shoulders to scan the horizon. But his hand stays, tucked against the crook of her palm. A warm point of contact. The keels lurch on the water, and the world keeps tossing and turning around them but this- it’s a constant.

-

In the end, they didn’t need them. Jack is waiting for them outside the hospital when they stumble back, hand-in-hand. His expression is unreadable, but he doesn't unleash the lashing she was expecting.

"We caught him. We're heading back," is all he tells them

 _He wants to be caught_ , Will said. And he did- he’d strung himself out on the prow of his boat, using the same hooks he’d used to split apart his victims. With every rocking of the boat tearing him farther apart, opened up his body like a book, spilled his guilt out like viscera on the deck. Coast Guard found him, half-decayed, drifting on the waters, the gaping ruins of his eye sockets tipped skyward in supplication.

Will is only permitted to see the bodies for a moment before it's being pulled out, shuffled out to Boston PD. They'd done their jobs- it was out of their hands now. One of the police buys them rounds of celebratory beer. Beverly snatches them some beers and they spends the rest of the afternoon throwing pebbles into the waves, watching the water swallow them up, cans in one hand like teenagers playing hooky.

Price natters unashamedly about the ruined state of his shoes for the rest of the day. Jack makes dark comments about lollygagging on the government's dollar during debrief, but they're harmless now. It's over.

 On the plane ride home, Beverly switches places with Zeller.

“Going back,” she says, fingering the edge of his jacket where it’s tucked against her side.

 “Going back,” he replies. He doesn't pull away. They're pressed so close his hair brushes her lashes when she turns her head. Not doing or saying anything, just breathing together. Inhale and exhale. The aisles shift and groan around them, Zeller is engaged in a loud debate with one of the flight attendants. But it's fine. Because he has this. Them. The plane’s wings angle, catching the light and the current, and they are airborne being lifted- up, up, through the clouds, a breathless ascent.

 

 

 

. .. o.O.o .. . 


End file.
